SALEM — The rules and ordinance committee discussed the city’s commercial building inspection program in its meeting Tuesday.

The meeting saw the continuation of discussions from the committee’s December meeting which were spurred by the partial collapse of the building located between BB Rooners and Heggy’s Confectionary at 288 E. State St., which formerly housed Kitchen Klassics and the law office of Earl Schory II, on Nov. 10.

Councilman and Committee Chairman Jeff Stockman said that he and Fire Chief Scott Mason had met with building department officials that morning to discuss the program, and that Mason had suggested the implementation of a dedicated inspector position. Mason explained that when the current system was established, the department had 19 employees and ran approximately 200 to 300 calls annually, while currently the department has 16 employees and responds to over 2,300 calls annually.

Mason also explained that currently the department’s three inspectors all have other responsibilities which may pull them away from scheduled inspections. Mason said that the inspector that was on duty Tuesday was also assigned to the department’s ambulance and had been pulled away from two of his three scheduled inspections for emergency calls and would not be on shift again until Friday.

Mason argued that a full-time inspector would be able to complete more inspections, and in doing so ensure that buildings were being inspected more frequently and identify potential dangers before they become a larger issue.

“If we had one full-time inspector who had no other duties than to go out and do the inspections, if we could find a way to fund that, that would help get into the buildings more regularly,” said Mason. “Right now, if we see something that doesn’t look right, we can call in an engineer at that time. Is it too far gone before we see it at that point? I don’t know. We’ve had some people put up some pretty clever mortar and things to hide issues that they knew were there and we didn’t know until some of that stuff started falling and cracking.”

In the meantime, Mason said that the department would be working to develop the necessary administrative elements in place and develop a formula for inspection fees based on the square footage of the property to make an inspector position self-funding.

Councilwoman Sara Baer asked how many inspections the department is currently completing annually and Mason estimated that approximately 200 of the 400 to 450 total inspections were being completed annually. Mason said that figure did not include re-inspections of failing properties which he said represented roughly 100 more inspections each year.

Mayor Cyndi Baronzzi Dickey said that the city would need to know what revenue a full-time inspector would generate in a year through inspection fees and if that would be sufficient to fund the position because the city, which already dedicates 83% of its annual budget to its safety forces, doesn’t have funding to add another full-time position otherwise.

“Right now, we don’t have room in the budget, we just don’t; it doesn’t leave enough to do everything we have to do in the city,” said Dickey.

Dickey suggested that despite it being “a touchy subject,” the department could coordinate with the private ambulance service EMT Ambulance to have their ambulance take some first responder calls on days where the department needs to conduct inspections, as most of the department’s calls are first responder calls rather than fire calls.

“You have three people as inspectors right now, so between those three guys if you had one that was doing them a day or two if it’s a big place and you had EMT on call for the first responder calls, you could maybe just have them pulled out for fire … if they could take over part of those services that could help you to get caught up so we could see what we would generate,” said Dickey.

Mason argued that EMT was not staffing sufficiently as it was, and that the department was doing transports with their ambulance nearly every day. Mason also flatly rejected the possibility of the department not responding to first responder calls.

Stockman asked if there were days that had fewer calls where inspections could be prioritized, and the department could provide backup while EMT conducted the primary response. Mason said that it would be difficult to do, as EMT does not give accurate response times for calls.

“You never know how long they’re going to be. They’re always coming from out of town, and they don’t give you an honest time, so we might be on scene for 10 to 15 minutes before they even get into town. They’re continually not telling us where they’re responding from,” said Mason.

Stockman ultimately said that during their discussion it had been determined that there was little that could be done to remedy the situation legislatively by the committee or city council, as it was an issue of manpower and funding.

“There’s almost nothing legislatively that we can do. It’s all going to be internal with the chief and the administration to try to find funding … the rules are already in place behind them,” said Stockman.

Dickey reiterated that the issue with an inspector position was funding, noting that she is always looking for potential sources of grant funding for the department similar the three-year Workforce Development Grant awarded to the health department which had funded its housing inspector position, but none have been available.

“I agree the easiest way to do it would be a full-time inspector, but I just don’t know how to make it happen financially,” said Dickey.

Ultimately no action was taken, and it was determined that Dickey would continue seeking funding opportunities while Mason continues to develop a proposal for new inspection fees to potentially fund the position.

The rules and ordinances committee will meet next at 6 p.m. Jan. 21.